Google Videos is closing down but Google vowed to let users play back their videos and provided an easy button to let users shuttle their existing content to YouTube.
Google tweaked its end game procedure for closing Google
Videos, removing the deadline and providing instruction for how users may
migrate video to YouTube.
Google last week emailed users of Google Video -- the
service users chiefly used to upload videos on Google's infrastructure before
the company's $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube -- that it would be shuttering
the service for good April 29.
The search engine provided instructions for how users
could move their content to YouTube, giving them until May 13 to do so.
The Google Video closure shouldn't have come as a shock
to anyone. Google revealed it would be silencing the service in January 2009 as
part of a mass execution of extraneous Web services, including Google Notebook,
Jaiku, Google Catalogs and others.
The company vowed to let users play back
existing videos for awhile, but did not provide an easy path to let
Google Video users shuttle their content to YouTube. Meanwhile, YouTube
popularity surged to the point that 35 hours of video are uploaded
there every minute.
More than two years later, Google is ready to close the book on
Google Videos and focus its servers on YouTube, which the company is
looking to build into a massive broadcast platform to compete with TV
networks and cable providers.
There are more than 3 million videos on Google Videos,
so it's no surprise users pushed back against Google closing the service the
way it chose to close it.
To assuage the change, Google promised Google Video users
won't lose their content and to work to automatically migrate Google Videos to
YouTube.
"In the meantime, your videos hosted on Google Video
will remain accessible on the Web and existing links to Google Videos will
remain accessible,"
said Mark Dochtermann, Google engineering manager.
Those who want to shuttle videos to YouTube must have a
YouTube account associated with their Google Video account, then click the Upload
Videos to YouTube button on the Google Video status page.
Users may also still download their videos from Google
Video.
Email
Print
